Better than that, a biased source that takes a position contrary to their bias:
The FBI and the DoE say a lab leak is the likely source of Covid.
Yes, but that power is not infinite.
Just to be clear: I donāt think that we should unquestioningly accept everything that, for want of a better word, āmainstream narrativesā are trying to tell us. Iām under no illusions that people have agendas and that things get discussed and planned behind closed doors in the corridors of power. I donāt even believe that the scientific community is immune to outside pressures and biases, especially when it comes to political āhot potatoā issues.
But I do not believe that the establishment is omnipotent. There is a limit to how much deception or how much scheming and conspiring you can successfully pull off with finite resources. Besides the difficulty of keeping them under wraps as more and more people are involved, some conspiracies are not economically viable, some are impractically complex, some have too many different ways of going wrong, some serve no clear purpose whatsoever, and some even go so far as to defy the laws of physics.
Herein lies the problem. While some of the āalternativeā claims are at least plausible (e.g. the claim that the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan), others of them are not (e.g. the claim that it was deliberately engineered). And because things are so polarised these days, if you take the plausible claims seriously, one side automatically assumes that youāre taking the implausible ones seriously too, while if you argue against the implausible claims, the other side assumes that youāre arguing against the plausible ones as well.
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Yes, thank goodness.
If that power were infinite, anyone who mentioned the lab leak now would continue to be censored, ridiculed, denied access to funds, called kooks, and cancelled.
You can find this on the homepage of Fox News today in an article by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:
As Jarrett Stepman in The Daily Signal wrote: "In 2020, if you thought it was possible COVID-19 came from a lab in China you were labeled a conspiracy theorist, a peddler of misinformation, ābonkers,ā and a racist.
"Facebook and other social media removed the lab leak claim from their apps or slapped āmisinformationā labels on it. Facebook did so in lockstep with the government.
"So according to the standard set in 2020, the Department of Energy just came out as a racist purveyor of misinformation this week.
"The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that, according to a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and Congress, the Department of Energy concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic likely came from a lab leak.
āāThe Energy Departmentās conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research,ā the Wall Street Journal report said.ā
Conflating those two things, an accidental leak and an intentional engineering for weaponization and intentional release, is a technique people use to discount the plausibility of a lab leak.
Recognizing that a lab leak is the likely source of Covid is not a gateway drug to a world of sitting in a basement with an aluminum foil hat writing about faked moon landings.
You are replacing objective arguments with playing the martyr card.
Fauci and Collins donāt control grants. Grant proposals and decisions on grants go to a panel of scientists that are not Fauci and not Collins.
Their disagreement means little without supporting evidence.
Again, a martyr card is not a sufficient replacement for evidence.
Even more, nearly every scientist thinks it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab. What gets ignored is that they majority of scientists think it is much more plausible that the source is found in nature.
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Could you provide a link to the poll of scientists that supports your assertion?
I have seen such data for Americans in general but not for scientists.
I have yet to interact with a scientist who says that a lab leak is impossible. All of the other scientists in this thread have said a lab leak is possible. Even the strongest proponents of a natural origin state that a lab leak is possible.
Polls are not a valid replacement for evidence.
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So your evidence for this is your individual interaction with scientists?
Do you only have your subjective opinion on the claim that the majority of scientists think natural origin is much more plausible?
You wrote:
āPolls are not a valid replacement for evidence.ā
If so, isnāt your as-yet-unsubstantiated claim about the belief of a majority of scientists even less helpful?
Yes. On top of that, the majority of opinion papers in scientific journals I have read come out on the side of a natural origin.
I think thatās fair.
And they arenāt.
It is. What is helpful is the evidence that points to a natural origin.
Thank you for admitting that your claim that the majority of scientists think a natural origin is much more plausible is simply your conjecture based on personal interactions and personal opinion.
Oh, and the link you provided:
āFor the lab leak theory to be true, SARS-CoV-2 must have been present in the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic started. This would convince me.
But the inconvenient truth is thereās not a single piece of data suggesting this. Thereās no evidence for a genome sequence or isolate of a precursor virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Not from gene sequence databases, scientific publications, annual reports, student theses, social media, or emails.
Even the intelligence community has found nothing. Nothing.ā
The writer claims to know what the intelligence community has found: Nothing!
This is another example of an assertion that is biased (just as someone claiming to know what the majority of scientists think). Or do you think this person has the security clearance and access to all intelligence services and their findings?
One person claims to know what the majority of scientists think, another claims to have a complete knowledge of everything intelligence agencies have found. This is not really appropriate, is it?
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@T_aquaticus
Here is something that moves towards what would convince the writer:
There were plenty sick in Wuhan in that time frame, so it is zero surprise that there were three in the lab. Of course thereās no way that any of them went to that market so far away, or had any exposure to anyone else who had, right? I bet they sold dead horses there, or at least the unbeaten parts of them. 
Although the beaten parts would have been tenderized, I suppose. (It getting old here, though.)
What does it mean to graciously disagree about COVID? Irony may not be particularly gracious, but is endless repetition questioning the source of COVID-19, and with a political bias?
What is important about knowing the source is developing strategies for preventing or quickly suppressing future novel viruses. Call it 50:50 or whatever, lab leak or market. Will we get cooperation from the Chinese government either way? Given that it is already well known that novel viruses can be produced in the wild and become zoonotic, I think that says something. Of course lab safety should be addressed, but that is way more important than speculating about gain-of-function research, even if it were true.
If memory serves, infectious diseases existed before COVID-19. People getting sick is not evidence that they were infected with COVID-19. In fact, I am suffering from a flu bug right now, and it isnāt COVID-19.
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Hi the evidence re mask wearing and hand washing comes from research, not conspiracy theories. Although the conclusions are not definite, it seems for most, mask wearing was pretty ineffective - Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses - Jefferson, T - 2023 | Cochrane Library
Personally I find it hard to believe mask wearing didnt help much and if there was another similar pandemic Id probably still wear one in shops etc.
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Thanks. Yes, Cochraneās a good site! Like you implied, they also appropriately note that some of the evidence is based on H1N1 and some of the lower level circulating viruses, so the evidence isnāt that great yet. I agreeāmasks likely do help. There was a smaller retrospective review that asthma decreased by 50% in exacerbations in the first year, though that was likely in part from social distancing.
Our health system still uses masks. Covid outbreaks among the really ill would be hard, not only for patients, but would shut down the hospitalāthat really hurts everyone.
Lots of good information coming out of the congressional hearings, such as the 8 Covid-like diseases that were described in the Wuhan data base, then the records were deleted in a cover up, and later a backup copy was found in the cloud.
Will they mention all of the information on the market?
Will they mention that SARS-CoV-2 was found on the surfaces of cages known to house wild animals known to be permissive hosts to the virus?
Will they mention that a large chunk of the earliest cases clustered in the market?
Will they mention that there were two lineages of SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of the outbreak, indicative of two transmissions from animal pools?
Will they mention that SARS-CoV-1 was also the result of transmission from wild animals in an open market?
The origin of COVID is not nearly as politicized up here in Canada so it is not a news story I have followed closely. But I found this LA Times article written yesterday on an (American) friendās Facebook page which seemed worth sharing for those interestedā¦
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Still, it is likely that Covid was around for some time before the first recognized case, just as a species is around sometimes long before the oldest know fossil of it produced. I suspect that given its propensity to mutate, the early Covid infections would perhaps have been lost in the noise of other illnesses until it mutated to a more infectious bug.